With Apple dominating the modern market for mobile phone applications, it might come as a surprise that the latest in cutting edge app development seems to have come from the Nokia stable. Nokia’s mobile phone research center has a hefty focus on changing the way mobile phones might be used in the future, and their latest effort has been to come up with something impressively weird and wacky: the ability to control your phone without even touching it.
A YouTube video shows how the prototype version of the application works, focusing on a dual set of features that would prove enticing to plenty of mobile users. The first involves controlling various features of the phone by waving a hand near to it. In the video, a developer can be seen changing the volume of a phone’s stereo by moving his hand up and down above the handset, and demonstrating that the radar function still works through fabric. The final version, of course, can be expected to allow far more variety in terms of ‘virtual’ handset control.
A second, and equally enticing use of the technology shows how the application can measure speed, with a developer walking past the handset, which shows the speed and direction he is moving in. The extent and accuracy of this technology is uncertain (the developers producing the demo suggest it could be used for sprinting and cycling, but with no mention of cars), but it would certainly make for an intriguing plaything if nothing else.
The application is still in the development stage, and could take anything from a couple of months to several years to reach the public market, but the odd functionality of a new kind of hands free phone is bound to meet with serious interest. Could radar be the feature that draws modern day mobile phone users away from the seemingly indestructible iPhone, and pushes the unconvincing Nokia Ovi store into mainstream use? We shall see…
